Figure 1.-- This First Communion portrait was taken in 1930. The unidentified boy is carrying a prayer book. He does not have s the traditional white ribbon on the sleeve which apparently more common in France and America. The boy wears a sailor cap and sailor suit with black long stockings, often worn for formality. Note that the capmis not round but composed of a number of straigt segments, rther like a hexagon. I am not sure about the fashion signicance. Note the winged badge. We are not sure what that signified. The sailor suit has no sailor dignified, but has a touch of Norfolk styling. Notice the gloves that many boys wore in these portraits before World War II. Note thatt despite the fact that the boy has an all navy/black outfit, his dickey is white.

We do not know what kind of headwear Belgian boys wore with their First Communion suits. We have some limited information. We do not see many boys wearing hats. This was almost always the case with boys wearing regular suits. We are not positive that they did not have caps, but we do not see the hats in the portraits. We think headwear was less common in the 1930s than earlier in the decade. It is understandable that they would not wear them for the portrait. But we do not see them on the tables often placed at the booys' side. Caps were also not very common. An exception seems to have been boys weearing sailor suits. We sometimes see them pictured with sailor caps. We both see the boys wearing them as wellm as holding them or with the caps placed on the table. All the caps we have seen are the soft caps, but there weew different styles. Here are archive is still limited so we can not yet assess the different sailor cap styles.

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Created: 2:51 PM 6/5/2009
Last edited: 2:51 PM 6/5/2009